Bruce T. Morrill, SJ
Lay Liturgical Leadership in the
u sCatholic Church؛
Popular A vances, Official Retreat
1 have been asked to provide an American perspective on lay leadership of Roman Catholic liturgy as toe last of six such presen- tations from a variety of North Atlantic countries.* In listening to toe historical descriptions and ^storal-theological analyses by colleagues from Germany, Austria, toe Netherlands, Switzerland, and France, 1 have discerned a remarkably common narrative of evolution from local ex^rim entation in toe early 1970s to restric- tive universal policies by toe end of toe 1990s, with toe fate of parish communities'weekly Sunday sharing in toe Eucharist tethered to toe official theology yet precipitous numerical decline of Roman Catholic priests. If 1 have heard n ^ colleagues' reports accurately, then it would seem that an earlier priority for assembling toe local community of toe faithful (highly valued by many clergy and laity alike) ceded to toe Vatican's concerned support, perhaps even defense, of toe centrality of toe priest for toe realization of toe
"full Eucharist."
Let me begin my American contribution on an autobiographical note. 1 can honestly report that, having been born in 1959,1 grew up with toe language of "vocation crisis" in toe American Catholic Church alw a y s swirling around me. Although memory (an utterly
Jesuit Father Bruce Murrili, the Edward A. Malloy Frotessor o£ Cathohc Studies at Vanderbilt University, was an invited speaker at a conference on laity-led worship in the Roman Catholic Church (Laien leiten liturgie - Aufgabe und Herausforderungfiir eine ?nádeme Ekklesiologie) hosted by the Theological Research College of Erfurt University, November 4-5,2011. We are pleased to share with you an edited, expanded version of his presentation. His latest book is Encounter- ing Christ in the Eucharist: The Paschal Mystery in People, Word, and Sacrament, published by Rauhst Press.
1 The program for the two-day conference in Erfurt, Germany, including a description of toe project and toe schedule of speakers, is available at http://
www.uni-erfurt.de/fileadmin/public-docs/Theologisches_Forschungskolleg/
F lg ^ T g n ^ a ie n L e ite n L itu r g ie2011.pdf (accessed on June 28,2013).
Lay Liturgical Leadership in toe
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Cathulic Churchsocial and subjective construction) can be deceiving, I am quite sure in my recollection that since the late 1960s the rhetoric about vocations to the priesthood and religious ltte has continuously borne a sense of urgency and crisis. This is something to ponder at the outset of a report on the state of liturgical leadership in the United States: For more than four decades both hierarchy and laity־ at least foe many strongly committed to foe vitality of foe church-have lived in an ongoing state of anxiety over foe relent- lessly declining number of priests. Such a psychosocially unhealthy state of affairs is due, in no small part, to foe Roman Catholic hierarchy's intransigent resistance fo entertaining foe notion of a married diocesan clergy or women priests. While official church documents, bishops' letters, and scientific surveys of foe laity all indicate a universal identification of foe Eucharist as singularly im- portant to foe mission and identity of foe church as a social body and in each of its members, foe policies of foe bishops have made celebration of the Eucharist on foe Lord's Day increasingly scarce in many parts of foe country. The reduction in foe number of Sunday services, and foe accompanying expectation that more and more Catholics should travel farther to participate, is foe result of foe h ierarch y severe restriction on use of Sunday Celebrations in foe Absence of a Priest,2 coupled with foe policy of closing and consolidating smaller churches into larger regional parishes. Thus, 1 must state bluntly at foe outset of my response to your invitation te report on non-ordained liturgical leadership in American Catholicism that only a very small percentage of parishes practice liturgies with laity presiding on either Sundays or weekdays.
Earlier fois year a joint project of five Catholic national ministry organizations published an extensive report entitled "The Chang- ing Face of
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Catholic Parishes," based on survey data that Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in foe Apostolate collected in 2010 from more than 5,500 Roman Catholic2 Based on the Internationai Committee on English in the Liturgy's translation of the Latin typical edition of the 1988 Directory for Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy published the official text for dioceses in the United States in 1996.
A revised edition accommodating changes in the Roman M issal Third Edition, was published on J a n u a r y 1. 2012.
Bruce T. Morrill, SJ
parishes in the country. One of the study's major findings was that over the past decade the average size o£ a
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parish has grown by a remarkabie 45 percent, from 2,260 individual registered members in 2000 to 3,277 members in 2010. The causes for such astounding increases in foe size of parishes, according to foe report, are foe growth in foe national Catholic population, especially foe His־panic/Latino population, but also foe widespread strategy since 2004 of closing and consolidating parishes, mostly smaller parishes.
Yet foe report immediately goes on to state: "Smaller parishes have a higher proportion of parishioners attending Mass than larger parishes."* Theologian Richard McBrien (University of Notre Dame) has commented on foe irony and dangers in foe bishops' strategy:
"Smaller parishes generally collect more per registered household in foe offertory collection than larger parishes. But it is foe smaller parishes that are being closed or merged with larger ones, and it is foe larger, sta ^ n ^ r o o m -o n ly parishes [notably in Florida, fraught with retirees and vacationers] that give some Catholics foe wrong impression that all is well with foe Catholic Church in foe United States."* The research data show that more Masses are being cele- brated per weekend at increasingly larger parishes, with 15 percent of parishes offering Mass at two or more church buildings (eridence of consolidation), a phenomenon that cannot but increase as foe trend of consolidation continues. As we shall see later in this pre- sentation, when faced with foe possibility of having te close and merge teto larger parishes
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Catholics consistently articulate their valuing of personal relationships, intimacy, and community5—not least as experienced in Sunday liturgy.Allow me te place a human face on this American data, a narra- tive I can recount on foe basis of my firsthand experience as a priest in foe A r c h d io c e se of Boston. Over foe past few decades Boston,
3 Mark M. Gray, Mary L. Gautier, and Métissa A. Cidade, The Changing Face ٠/
U.S. Catholic Parishes, The Emerging Models o£ Pastoral Leadership Project (Washington, DC: National Association o£ Lay Ministry, 2011), 1.
4 Richard McBrien, ״The State o£ 11s Parishes Today," National Catholic Reporter (September 12,2011), accessed at: http://ncronline.org/blogs/essays-theology/
state-us־parishes-today.
5 For a development o£ these concepts, see "Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Foundations o£ Community," chap. 3 in William A. Clark,AVoice ofTheir Own:
The Authority ofthe Local Parish (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005),6 5 و 1 ־م.
Lay Liturgical Leadership in foe
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Catholic Churchone of the oldest, largest, and most powerful (Internally and in the wider politieal culture) archdioceses in the United States, has, nonetheless, experienced declines in membership, clergy, and reli- gious, along with closures of schools and parishes—all under official leadership that clings to a conventional ideology of the ordained priesthood linked te the exclusive clerical presidency over Sunday worship. Attendance at Mass, which has been steadily falling since ffie 1980s, dropped drastically during 2002, as the extent of clergy sexual abuse, ffie coddling of perpetrators, and ffie cover-up of cases by archbishops and bishops came to light. In 2004 the archdiocese publicly launched its plan to close 25 percent of its more than 500 parishes. A diocesan staff member later confided te me that this drastic need for closures was due not primarily te ffie fiscal crisis caused by ffie abuse cases but by Archbishop Bernard Law's staunch refusal over his nearly ttventy-year reign te face ffie hard realities of declining clergy, shrinking Catholic populations in many areas, and steadily diminishing rates of Mass attendance.
To close and consolidate parishes apparently did not align with Cardinal Law's triumphal image of the Catholic Church. Once he resigned from office in disgrace, diocesan officials found them- selves forced te make up for ffie delayed cuts in an acutely short period of time.
I myself experienced ffie decline and results of closures and consolidation through my part-time pastoral-liturgical service to a suburban parish during my tenure at Boston College over ffie past fifteen years. By ffie end of 2002 one could see at all four weekend Masses a great increase in ffie number of empty seats in ffie pews.
The emptier condition continued until a fow years later when four other area parishes were closed, such that by 2006 ffie average at- tendance in our parish was back te "normal." But this was what one must call a "new normal," for ffie empty seats had been refilled not by ffie return of disaffected members but, rather, by people from ffie other closed churches. These were all new faces in front of me.
In ffie second half of ffie past decade, while even those numbers dwindled further, ffie pastor announced his retirement, as well as ffie archdiocese's inability te replace him. The parish was merged with ffie other one across town, under ffie care of one priest, with ffie saints' names for both churches eliminated so as te create canoni- cally one new parish under a new name (Good Shepherd-still a
Bruce T Morrill, SJ
farther irony!). At this point a total of half as many Masses are cele -
brated in the two church buiïdings than were ten years ago—but ,
sad!y, seating capacity is not a probiem. ©ver the past decade, six affected parishes have been replaced incrementally by one that op -
erated out of two church buildings, of which one will soon be sold .
There is, not surprisingly, much anxiety and argument over which of the two churches is to be sold. For the lay faithful, these
are not merely what we Americans would call "physical plants
"
but, rather, the physical site of the parish, the community of faith .
? eople feel deep attachments to their houses of worship, citing the life-passage events and/or habitual communal liturgies they have experienced there. This makes the parish ch u rch -as well as its community hall and classroom s-powerful symbolic spaces not only or primarily because of their canonical status as sanctioned locations for the re se rv a tio n of the Blessed Sacrament or the celebration of the Rite of Marriage but rather (people's comments largely indicate) because of their affective bonds to these buildings
as houses peopled by living memories of personal, interpersonal ,
and communal life. In 2004 a dozen Boston area parishes made national news when some of the lay membership began occupying their church buildings, keeping ^ n ty -fo u r-h o u r vigils so as to
prevent their closure and sale. A few such vigils still con tin u e-on e ,
in fact, in the "cluster" area of the parish I have been describing h ere-w ith small numbers of parishioners assembling daily and on Sunday to celebrate a Liturgy of the Word and communion service
( with consecrated hosts supplied by sympathetic area priests .)
The Boston Globe has reported on this phenomenon since it began some seven years ago, often making the vi^l-occupations their
( customary) feature "religion" story for Christmas or Easter. These reports are fall of quotes by laypeople describing the strengthening of their communal sense of being church, of their investment in the celebration of the word and Holy Communion, and their greater
sense of engagement with what goes into liturgical celebration .
Still, their numbers are small in comparison with the staggering numbers of Catholics in that area who have simply stopped going
.*
to Mass regularly
Author's note: One year (to the month) after my delivering the original ver -
٠
sion of this article as my address to the conference in Germany, the A rchdiocese
Lay Liturgical Leadership in the
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Catholic ChurchSimilar stories abound throughout toe northeastern states. For example, in my native region o£ Bangor, Maine (250 miles/400 kilo- meters northeast o£ Boston), seven parishes over an area o£ hun- dreds o£ square miles have been merged into one newly named mega-parish, with a team o£ toree priests
(£٠٢
now!) driving be- toreen toe seven sites to eelebrate one or, in a couple o£ cases, two Masses at each church building per weekend. Just a dozen years ago my home parish had four busy Masses per weekend. Now there is only one Saturday evening vigil Mass, and it is sufficient!The people are encouraged to drive to whichever church site in toe region they wish, according to toe time o£ Mass that suits them.
But this, o£ course, breaks down any sense o£ community and personal relationships among toe £aith£ul. The Diocese o£ Portland, Maine, has an extensive web site outlining all toe reconfigured, consolidated parishes throughout toe state, detailing toe times Mass can be found from one church building to toe next.^ The assump- tion, o£ course, is that people wifi drive past their own and even another church building, many miles, to get to Mass. The results are reduced participation everywhere. In £act, scientific polling data has found that toe northeastern United States, once a bastion o£
both Catholicism and Protestantism, now has toe lowest percent- age o£ people reporting active engagement in religion.® In toe case
of Boston on November 14,2012, announced finalized plans to merge their remaining 288 parishes into 135 clusters. In making the announcement, Arch- bishop Sean O'Malley said the staff of the newly configured cooperatives "must refocus on outreach and evangelization" to lapsed Catoolics, given the fact that regular Mass attendance by people who identified themselves as Catholic had dropped to just 16 percent, or half the national average. Monica Brady-Myerov,
"Boston Cardinal Approves Archdiocese Reshuffle," WBUR, htt^ //www.wbur .org/2012/ll/15/boston־parish־cluster־plan (accessed June 28,2013).
7 See, http://www.portlanddiocese.net/parishes_main.php, accessed, October 24,2011.
8 The six New England States—Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont—ranked among the seven (out of a total of fifty) states with the lowest percentage for whom religion is very important in their lives. Neighboring New York ranked tenth from the bottom. The Pew Forum's 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey included measuring frequency of worship service attendance, frequency of prayer, and certainty of belief in God.
See, "How Religious Is Your State?," Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (December 21,2009), http://pewforum.org/How־Religious־Is־Your־State־.aspx.
Bruce T Morrill. SJ
of the Catholic Church, one may reasonably conclude that one important factor in this abysmal decline has been the hierarchy's insistence on maintaining a male celibate priesthood and, with that, binding the form of Sunday eucharistie celebration to the person of the priest. The decades-long e^ortation to "pray for vocations" has come to ring hollow for most and left many of the devout, such as my ninety-year-old aunt, deflated
,ئ
notd isillu sio n e d .
I want to add this note: This sweet aunt, a longtime communion minister, wrote a strongly argued letter to the bishop fifteen years ago when he announced his plan to sell off the parish church, community building, and rectory. I was proud of her argument for how she and so many others had invested not only their lives but great amounts of money in the upkeep and renovation of the church, not to mention the rather new (ten-year-old) community hall they had just paid off. She was telling the bishop that what mattered was their community of faith, even if it meant not having a residential priest as pastor. My father, a daily communicant, was stunned to learn in a meeting about consolidation of the area parishes that the bishop of ?ortland, not the local community, con- trolled the buildings and assignment of clergy. Dad had proposed that the parish recruit and finance a religious-order priest on their own, which in itself would be a futile effort insofar as the decline of religious in the United States has been even greater than that of diocesan priests.
Given these few examples, nonetheless, of bishops' widespread policies of closing and consolidating parishes, it is not surprising to learn foe following from foe
2011
"Changing Faces of foeus
C hrch" report:
Most parishes, 94 percent, do not report any Sunday Celebrations in foe Absence of a Friest annually. These are m ost com m only cele- brated in FLC parishes [parishes led by a Fastoral Life Coordinator].
More than a third (35 percent) of parishes entrusted te a PLC report at least one of these celebrations in 2009. However, even here m ost indicate celebrating fewer than ten a year.
Weekday communion services occur with som e frequency in more than four in ten parishes (42 percent). However, there is a bimodal distribution with 15 percent of parishes indicating they celebrate fewer than ten of these per year and 16 percent indicating they
Lay Liturgical Leadership in foe
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Catholic Churchcelebrate 40 or more. As with Sunday Celebrations ¡n the Absence ئأ of a ?riest these are m ost common and m ost f r e ^ e n tly available
9.
parishes enfrusted to a PLC
A few comments for interpretation and clarification: First, even among the 6 percent of parishes with some practice of this service ,
extremely few would have the deacon- or lay-led Sunday Celebra -
tion in the Absence of a Priest as their regular form of Sunday worship. Only 16 percent appear to have a communion service on
weekdays (i.e., more than forty such celebrations per year .)
Lay-led liturgy remains quite rare in the
us
Catholic Church .Furthermore, the "Changing Faces" report indicates that 80 percent of the paid lay ministry staff in parishes are women. With Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest most commonly celebrated in parishes coordinated by a layperson, the bulk of such liturgies
are obviously led by women .
Second, I wish to note the neologism "Pastoral Life Coordinator
"
( PLC).™ The arrival of this conventional term in American Catholi -
cism, as opposed to the language of "pastoral associate" or
"
pastoral minister," indicates that the
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church is wrestling with the first of the "Practical P ro v isio n s" in the 1997 instruction onnon-ordained ministry issued jointly by eight Vatican offices ,
namely, the "Need for Appropriate Terminology."** The overarch -
ing concern in that document is the protection of the distinct status of ordained ministry. The language of "ministry," then, "becomes doubtful, confused and hence not helpful for expressing the
. 30 , U.S. Catholic Parishes /
٠ Gray, Gautier, and Cidade, The Changing Face و
detailed description of the responsibilities, desired ^ alities, educa -
ه For ١٠
tional formation, term a p p o in tm en t, and evaluation of the pastoral life coordina -
tor in one archdiocese with numerous priestless parishes, see Archbishop Priesthood Shortage and the Pastoral״ ,d ornas Murphy, Seattle, Washington
, 24 Care of Parish Communities," appendix 6, Origins: CNS Documentary Service no. 44 (April 20,1995), accessed on the Origins web site
.
11
"
Some Questions Regarding Collaboration of Nonordained Faithful in Priests' Sacred Ministry" (Vatican City, August 15,1997), in Origins: CNS D0CU -
09 . The first article among ه
398(:
27,1997 mentary Service 27, no. 24 (November
the "Practical Provisions," arrives at the following conclusion: "It is unlawful for the nonordained faithful to assume titles such as pastor, chaplain, coordinator ,
moderator or other such similar titles which can confuse their role and that of the (.
403) "
pastor, who is always a bishop or priest
Bruce T Morrill^ SJ
doctrine of the faith whenever the difference 'of essence and not merely of degree' between the baptismal priesthood and the ordained priesthood is in any way obscured."’؛ The Vatican's clear concern from tire outset of the instruction is to "safeguard the nature and mission of sacred ministry," which they say is founded upon "an essential point of Catholic ecclesiological doctrine."“
The rhetoric of collaboration in the title and throughout the text attempts to correct any notion that the laity substitute for tire ordained in leading the parish, preaching or presiding thereby signaling an "ambiguous 'advancement of the laity,' etc."14 For Vatican officials, ambiguity in thought and practice among many laity (and even, it seems, some clergy) concerning the dependence of the Eucharist, other sacraments, and preaching upon ministra- tion by those in hoiy orders threatens the very apostolicity of the church.
And what of the Sunday Celebration in the Absence of a Friest, which the Vatican instruction describes as "this useful and delicate service"? Bishops should give a special mandate (with term limit) for laity to preside over these only in cases where "distance or physical conditions" comprise a genuine "obstacle" to people's fulfilling "the obligation to attend Mass on Sunday and holy days of obligation [which] is satisfied only by attendance at holy Mass."15 11
الآ؛ر
the Vatican finds Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest "delicate" on several counts: who may preside at such services, under what auspices and for what duration, and what constitutes an inordinate distance substantiating dispensation from the obligation to attend Mass (which such lay celebrations in themselves do not obviate). The hierarchy constantly find them- selves combatting "error" and "confusion" on many fronts.16 Indeed, one finds pastoral letters by various American bishops12 Ibid. Here the instructien quotes from John Paui II's speech to the sympo- sium on iay participation in priestiy ministry, April 22,1994.
13 "Some Questions," 399,401.
14 Ibid. 404.
15 Ibid., 405
16 Ibid. See also. Bishops o£ Wisconsin, "Sunday Worship without a Priest:
A Letter," Origins 24, no. 17 (October 6,1994); Bishop Michael Sheehan, Lubbock, Texas, "Sunday Worship without a Priest," Origins 21, no. 39 (March, 5,1992), both accessed on toe Origins web site.
Lay LJturgical Leadership in toe
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Catholic Churchprior to 1997 fretting over confusion in eucharistie theoiogy and
"biurring"^ of ministeriai statuses as they expiain their refusal to authorize any widespread practice of Sunday Celebrations in toe Absence of a Priest in their dioceses. Some even r a tio n a lize that toe American trend toward driving substantial distances for shop- ping, entertainment, and sports events relativizes what should be considered a burdensome distance to 1
ﻢﺴﻬﻟ
toe obligation to attend Mass.*® The American bishops' priority is to preserve as normal practice toe "fullness" of toe Eucharist as celebrated under a priest's presidency.*؟ Yet these American bishops' pastoral letters and other sources also give evidence that toe people's concern is not exclusively or even necessarily so much about driving distance as their desperate desire to retain their local parish communities.2017 A 1995 letter by the archbishop 0£ Kansas City and the bishops o£ the three other dioceses in the state o£ Kansas itemized in detail what one finds in numerous other American bishops' letters restricting use o£ Sunday Celebra- tions in the Absence o£ a Priest:
• A blurring o£ the distinction betiveen a priest and a deacon or a nonordained minister presiding over communion service.
• A blurring o£foe relationship between pastoral and sacramental ministry.
• A blurring o£ the connection between the e u ch a rist and the works ©£ charity and justice.
• A blurring ©£ the need for priests and therefore a blurring 0£ the continual need for vocations.
• A blurring o£ the linkage between foe local church and foe diocesan and uni- versal church that is embodied in foe person o£ the parish priest.
Kansas Bishops, "Policy Restricts Sunday Communion without Mass/' Origins:
CNS Documentary Service 25, no. 8 (July 13,1995): 122-24, here, 123.
18 See, for example. Bishop Leo O'Neil, Manchester, New Hampshire, "The Staffing and Structure o£ Parishes," Origins: CNS Documentary Service 24, no. 18 (October 13,1994), accessed on the Origins web site.
19 "Pastoral etiorts should have this aim above all that the sacrifice o£ foe Mass on Sunday be regarded as the only true actualization o£ foe Lord's paschal mystery and as the most complete mani£estation o£ the church." Congregation for Divine Worship, "Directory for Sunday Celebrations in the Absence o£ a Priest," no. 13, Origins: CNS Documentary Service 18, no. 19 (October 20,1988).
See also. Bishop Howard Hubbard, Albany, New York, "A Vision for Parish Plan- ning and Restracturing, ״ Orions: CNS Documentary Service 25, no. 4 (April 11, 1996), accessed on foe Origins web site.
20 Nearly a decade ago sociologist Ruth Wallace, author o£ They Call Him Pastor:
MarriedMen in Charge 0/ Catholic Parishes (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), described members in parishes without priests heading their administration "scared to
Bruce T. Morrill, SJ
I would argue that the laity's need for the authoritative official leadership of the ordained priest is at least equally balanced with the value of the communal bonds-theologically, the communion—
experienced in the parish. More anecdotal evidence comes from my time as a ^siting professor at Seattle University in 2007, in an archdiocese where numerous parishes lacked a resident priest/
pastor. When 1 made myself available for Sunday Masses, 1 found people exuberantly grateful for my circuit riding into their churches.
They want to be together. Sure
,ئ
I could drive out to these rela- tively remote places from the city, so goes the argument, those parishioners could make the trek into Seattle. But in fac^ Catholics in that type of situation largely do not. It would be numerically unreasonable to expect that a couple hundred people would com- mute into the city instead of me alone going to them. But the deeper issue is community.** This is not about just getting to any Mass possible but about celebrating together as a community.Both the anecdotal and statistical evidence bears this out. And yet my documentary research indicates that the bishops refuse te de- ploy their official Sunday Celebrations in tee Absence of a Priest except in what they define as emergency situations. They may see this strategy as avoiding confusion and responding te their fear about "blurry" practical theologies of ministry in relation to Eucharist, but tee people's concerns lie elsewhere.
The bishops' own documents are confusing insofar as they largely begin with passionate theologies of tee Lord's Day, of tee local church (parish) as tee successor to tee primordial Christian communities, and communal dimensions of tee Eucharist as body of Christ, only, inevitably it seems, te cast all those values aside te assert tee necessity (indeed, canonical obligation) for all to assist at
death that the p a rish is going to close." Joe Feuerherd, "Just How Bad Is It?
Friest Shortage Worse Than Experts Predicted; Foreign Priests Filling the Gap/' National Catholic Reporter (October 17,2003). See also National Federation o£
Priests Councils, "Priestless Parishes: Priests'Perspective," Origins: CNS٠٠،»־
mentary Service 21, no. 3 (May 30,1991), accessed on tee Origins web site.
21 For a social-scientific study of this value among u s parishioners, see Jerome P. Baggett, " im m unity: Narratives for Belonging," chap. 5, in Sense ofthe Faith- ful: How American Catholics Live Their Faith (New York: Oxford University Press,
م 8 ه 125(, 2009
Lay Liturgical Leadership in tee
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Catholic ChurchSunday celebrations presided over by a priest.“ In these ietters the bishops often take pains to expiain why the priest's recitation of the eucharistic prayer is essential to the "fullness" of eucharistie celebration. That these pastors find themselves thus compelled to teach so explicitly and repeatedly is indicative of their awareness of the extent to which the laity, despite Vatican II's priority for full, conscious, active participation in the liturgy, have largely not come to appreciate the theological structures and content of the entire eucharistic prayer (or anaphora).** One document stunned me with its honest admission that Catholics have been conditioned to identify Eucharist not with the entire ritual celebration but, rather, with the individual host she or he received in the communion rite (and, secondarily, the elevation of that host in the act of
consecration).**
22 See, am©ng ©thers. Bishops of Wisconsin, "Sunday Worship Without a Priest,"
and Bishop Hubbard, "A Vision for Parish Planning and Restructuring."
23 This lack of popular priority for the entire eucharistic prayer may contribute to bishops repeatedly condemning the terminology of "Sister's Mass" or "John's Mass" or "deacon's Mass" that consistently emerges in parishes where Sunday Celebration in the Absence of a Priest is practiced regularly. For worried con- demnation of these neologisms, see, among others, Kansas Bishops, "Policy Restricts Sunday Communion without Mass"; Bishop Hubbard, "A Vision for Parish Planning and Restructuring"; and Bishop Sheehan, "Sunday Worship without a Priest." One commentary on the phenomenon warrants quoting:
"[SJome people are saying they like ׳Sister Ann's Mass'better than they like 'Fathers Mass/This is, in part, because often non-ordained parish leaders are better prepared and more excited about what they are doing than the priest. . . . Notwithstanding the need for priests to prepare for and act interested in the liturgy, notwithstanding the zeal and fervor of the newly appointed non-ordained presider at the communion service, the fact remains that the proliferation of communion services in place of the Sunday eucharist can blur the distinction between the two and can, and often does, lead to the diminution of people's appreciation for the need of the Sunday eucharistic celebration" (National Federation of Priests Councils, "Priestless Parishes: Priests' Perspective").
24 The 1991 National Federation of Priests Councils' report on the phenomenon of priestless parishes included the following analysis: "Popular piety, as well as a particular theological emphasis that the church has engendered for the past few centuries, is a contributing factor to the present popularity of communion services. . . . It is easy to see how people formed by an emphasis on the real presence as the heart of the matter of the eucharist could understand ׳going to communion' as the essence of our worship. The step to assuming that as long as one 'goes to communion' one is 'doing' the eucharist is an e a s y one to take."
Bruce T. Morrill. SJ
I have long ruminated over this phenomenon myself, forming the opinion that the retention of a change in celebrant's posture (lowering arms from the orans position), coupled with the change in the "voice" of the prayer text itself (from a thankful, vocative address to the Father to a prosaic narrative account of the Last Supper), followed by elaborate medieval-originated elevation and genuflection gestures with host and chalice (now increasingly accompanied by bell-ringing once again) altogether perpetuate a practical theology of ChrisLs presence in toe host that is quite independent from toe rest of toe long prayer. What matters is that consecrated hosts are distributed at toe climax of toe service. The members of the assembled community thereby process to receive toe Christ really present to them from a vessel made of precious metal. That toe hosts distributed at toe Sunday celebration have been transformed into toe sacrament of Chrises body is essential to toe laity. When that consecrating transformation actually took place is not nearly of equal concern. In fact, even when attending a
"complete" Sunday Mass, toe odds are extremely high that toe assembled people will see a ciborium of prerôously consecrated hosts brought from toe tabernacle to the altar during toe com- munion rite. Thus, most are accustomed (and this is important for understanding how ritual works^؟) without thinking about it to receive Communion from a vessel containing hosts that were not consecrated at toe current liturgy. It is a repeated ritual pattern deeply inscribed in their bodies, individual and collective.26
The ritualized body of toe majority of American Catholics, I am arguing is shaped not by toe details of verbal content in toe prayers of toe priest (let alone, related theological arguments) but rather by symbolic gestures most directly related to their part in toe a c tio n -in this case, adoration of consecrated hosts in sacred vessels on the altar table and, then, a procession together to each receive toe sacramental Body of Christ offered to them from a sacred vessel by a designated minister in front of toe sanctuary.
25 See Adam B. Seligman et al., Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits ofSincerity (New York: ©xford University ?ress, 2008), 7,41-47,118,129-30.
“ For development and implications of the concept of the ritualized body, see Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Fress,
. 117 ﻮﻫ (, 1992
Lay Liturgical Leadership in toe u s Catholic Church
Herein appears a key reason for why many Ameriean Cathoiics, when faced with foe elimination of communal Sunday worship in their home parish, are not too disturbed by a service in which a Liturgy of foe Word leads into a ritual for distributing Holy Com- munion. Put bluntly, foe people do not miss foe eucharistie prayer.
They have so little affective or intellectual appropriation of it as not fo be disturbed by its absence or, therefore, to be persuaded by foe hierarchy's exhortations about foe value of foe "full Eucharist"
(their neologism for foe Mass, as distinct from a communion service).
If my (theoretical) analysis is at all adequate to this (practical) ritual-symbolic phenomenon, then some irony appears fo be in play: Contemporary concern for community melds with a popular medieval practical understanding of Christ's real presence in foe sacred host. 1 would argue that this is precisely because multiple affective and ideational values are at play in fois complex, power- laden situation. The American Catholic laity value foe symbolic bonds of community that assembling in their (homey) parish church for liturgy affords, and they value foe ritual-symbolic power of foe ordained clergy presiding at rites and, especially, confecting foe Blessed Sacrament. Yet foe latter value is relative fo a more primary affection for Christ really present in foe conse- crated host that is placed on foe altar and then distributed in the familiar ritual pattern of a climactic communal procession fo some minister(s), who perform foe ritual trope of presenting a conse- crated host from a dignified vessel to foe communicant, saying,
"The Body of Christ." That an ordained priest confected foe Blessed Sacrament remains of value, but that a priest actually be present for foe communion rite-adoration of foe real presence in foe hosts contained in a ciborium brought from foe tabernacle fo foe altar and distributed as Holy Communion—may well be of secondary importance fo whatever percentage of
us
Catholics at this point value assembling regularly in their local church on foe Lord's Day.Bruce T Morrill, SJ
؛ملروﺂﻣلآ
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